Outworld Station — getting started: the prologue, the first levels, and the numbers behind them

Outworld Station is a space-station factory game with no conveyor belts. Modules are joined by links instead, every module has a hard send rate, and your first hour is spent learning which of the two ends of a link is the bottleneck. This guide is the opening: the prologue steps in the order the game actually gives them to you, the station-level unlock ladder, the early build costs and production ratios, and the traps that eat the first ten hours.

Version written for: 1.1.1.0 (live since 22 July 2026). 1.1.2.0 was on the beta branch on 23 September 2026, adding Arkship Terminal missions and Station Prestige. 1.0 released 5 May 2026; Early Access began 22 April 2025.

What the game is doing differently

• Links, not belts. You link a producer's output to a consumer's input and the game moves the items

invisibly. Links are unlimited on the receiving end and capped on the sending end, so the limit is always a module's output rate, not the distance.

• The HUB is your mission board. Objectives that say "produce the following items" mean put them in a

HUB inventory. 1.1 increased the HUB's item send rate; the HUB also collects rewards from optional contracts.

• Your drone is the hands. It carries the parts for anything you build — build costs are paid from the

drone's inventory, not from a global bank. TAB opens the inventory, which also contains a Synthesizer tab for hand-crafting most recipes wherever you are.

• Everything is data-driven. Item stacks, recipes, costs, level unlocks and tech upgrades live in

DataTables, which is why community tools can mirror them (see Sources) and why a patch can silently change a ratio.

The prologue: "Complete the Gate" (level 00)

The story opens in the Terra system, not the TAU system. The Gate that will carry you out is damaged. The game walks you through, in this order:

1. Run the drone control tests — follow the steps, then take control.
2. Clear the wreckage around the damaged jumpgate buffer. The game recommends your Neutron Lazer

for this.

1. Deconstruct the damaged buffer with Sell mode to free the space.
2. Collect the items left in your HUB — you start with materials, not empty-handed.
3. Build an Atomizer and a Smelter. The Atomizer turns asteroids into raw materials; the Smelter turns

those into metals.

1. Feed asteroids into the Atomizer. Hold SHIFT and drag to pick up several asteroids at once, up to

your drone's maximum carry weight.

1. Select the Titanium recipe on the Smelter. A factory with no recipe selected does nothing — this is

the single most common reason a new station looks alive and produces nothing.

1. Link Atomizer → Smelter and Smelter → HUB. Links send required items automatically.
2. Now unlink Smelter → HUB again. This is deliberate: it is the game teaching you that repeating the

link action removes it. Don't read it as a bug.

1. Build the extra modules for the mini factory and link them into supply chains.
2. Build a Solar Panel and align it to the sun. Power generation is "dangerously low" at this point;

misaligned panels produce less. SHIFT + left-click aligns several panels at once.

1. Test the advanced settings on your modules (the cog button): custom labels, and priority —

higher-priority modules pull resources first.

1. Select "Complete The Gate" in the Objectives Panel, synthesize the Stargate Parts from the

drone's Synthesizer tab, and place them in the HUB.

1. Assemble the Stargate Parts → the gate opens → you arrive in the TAU system. From here every level

follows the same shape: do the current objective, unlock technologies, pick the next objective.

Running out of materials during synthesis is normal in the prologue — the game tells you to feed more asteroids into the Atomizer and empty the HUB again.

Level 1–3: the opening unlocks

The game's own level table uses its internal IDs as the level number (01_, 02_, 03_…), and two of those numbers can be cross-checked against the developer's patch notes (Portal Technology at 06, Servitor Station moved to 08 in 1.1), so the numbering below is the game's, not a guess.

Two practical notes on that table:

• Artifact Analyzers queue. Drop several artifacts in and it works through them one at a time, so

feeding it a batch costs you nothing but time.

• Miners can be built on. They have connection points, so a mining outpost is a small station in its

its own right — the community pattern from the 0.1.2 era was 1 Miner, 2 Solar Panels, 1 energy storage for safety, 1 turret and 1 Freighter Dock.

Levels 4–6: the first real wall

That is the shape of the whole game: each level's "main" objective asks you to build a set of ships, and the thing the ships were scouting gets added to the System View as a new station site. Level 5's Titania is the first one that will strand a player who has not started mining ore nodes, and level 6's second asteroid belt is the first that expects you to move goods between zones.

Early build costs

From the community ResourceCalculator's data. The Wormhole Terminus figures in the same data set match a hand-written Steam guide from 0.1.2.8 exactly (50 / 25 / 25 / 10), which is the only independent confirmation available; treat the rest as "latest community data", not developer-published numbers.

The same data lists that identical 50 / 25 / 25 / 10 package as the cost of establishing a station at each of the four opening locations (Asteroid Belt, Asteroid Belt 2, Titania – Low Orbit, Glacialis – Ice Ring). Treat that one as unverified: it is the Wormhole Terminus price list applied to the locations, and nothing in the sources I read spells out new-station founding separately.

Upgrades are additive

You keep the lower module — the upgrade consumes it. 1.1's balance change here is the important one: higher-tier factories produce more output items for the same input items, so a Mk 2 upgrade is a throughput multiplier, not just speed.

The production chains, with ratios

Every line below is inputs → output per craft, from the calculator data.

Smelter (raw ore → metal)

Refinery (water and gases)

Matter Printer (metal → parts)

Fabricator (level 2)

Plasma Forge (level 7): Superalloy = 4 Titanium + 4 Tungsten. 1.1 added an alternative Superalloy recipe, which the developer's notes confirm but do not detail; the Laboratory is how you unlock alternates.

Manufactory (level 8)

Ammo Factory (level 9): Warheads = 5 Nitrox + 2 Molecular Bonding; Light Missile Ammo (5) = 1 Warheads + 10 Hull Plating + 5 Basic Frames + 1 Small Engine.

Reading the ratios

Iron-free chain: Titanium is your only early metal, and it feeds two branches — Basic Frames (buildings, cheap) and Hull Plating (modules, 1.5 Titanium each). Composite comes out of Carbon, not titanium, which is why Carbon Ore is worth mining early even though nothing in the first objectives demands it. Glass Fibre → Fibre Optics → Superconductor is the silicon chain, and it is the one you will starve: one Silica makes exactly one Glass Fibre but Molecular Bonding, which every frame and plating recipe wants in 6s, comes off a second Silica ore at 3 per craft.

Ships, fuelling and arming

Ship orders are what objectives actually ask for — every one wants ships, not raw materials.

Fuelling happens by dropping a ship into a Fuel Depot supplied with Hydrogen; larger ships carry Micro Fusion Reactors and begin to melt down if they are not fuelled in time.

The traps that cost new players their first ten hours

1. A factory with no recipe selected. Select the module, open its production section, pick the recipe.
2. A link that is not there. Links are manual. If a consumer sits at 0%, check the link before the

supply.

1. Output-limited, not input-limited. Every module's send rate is capped; its intake is not. If you

are building more production than your storage can push out, you are paying for idle machines. The community answer is a small palette of "supply" and "request" storage modules you copy as you expand, each set to a one-stack buffer.

1. Un-aligned solar panels. Solar loses output when it is off the sun's axis. SHIFT+left-click to

align a batch; the Curved Reflectors tech exists specifically to cut misalignment loss.

1. Priorities. Higher-priority modules take resources from sources first. If a downstream chain is

starving, raise its priority in the Advanced Settings panel instead of building more smelters.

1. Expansion levels cannot be bought. From level 5 on, the main objective is a *shopping list of

fuelled ships*; you cannot satisfy it with spare materials. Budget the hydrogen and the docks first.

1. Micro Fusion Reactors melt down. Completed capital ships must be quickly moved into a Fuel Depot.

There is a settings option to disable ship reactor meltdowns if you would rather not play that game.

1. Antimatter needs power, permanently. A Containment Chamber holds Antimatter and radioactive

material only while powered; unpowered, it fails. The Enhanced Containment tech extends the failure time.

1. A Wormhole Terminus is one-to-one. It is a Stargate, not a network: each terminus links to exactly

one other. Pipe inputs 1–4 map to outputs 1–4 on the far side, so you can move four fluids/gases through one pair. A 0.1.2.8-era guide measured it at 50 MW with a 1000-unit internal tank, and warns about reserving slots — one bulk item will happily fill every slot and back the rest up.

1. Throughput ceilings arrive before you expect them. In a 1.1 discussion a player measured a Mk 3

Miner at 540 Titanium Ore/min and Mk 3 Smelters at 270/min each, against a Mk 2 Wormhole that could not take 810/min — the developer's answer was to process more before moving and to upgrade wormholes. Decentralise processing toward the ore rather than centralising everything at the main station.

1. Recycler Tokens get more expensive. Each Token you buy costs more resources than the last, so feed

it waste continuously rather than bingeing.

1. Tech upgrades cost materials, not just Tech Points. There are 27 upgrade families (solar cells,

shield overcharge, carry weight, drone hitpoints, inventory slots, atomizer yield, production speed, connector speed, module hitpoints, miner output, auto-repair, freighter speed, fusion output, fusion core, quantum upload rate, exo-lifter cargo, containment time and more), each with four tiers. The extracted game strings carry placeholders for the percentages, so I am not going to quote numbers I cannot see — the Codex shows the real values.

1. Don't rebuild. Buildings can be moved with CTRL+X (since 1.0), blueprints arrive at level 4,

blueprint area/object limits go up at level 7, and CTRL+V re-pastes your last copy. Designs with pipes need their parts re-checked after a move.

1. Pipes flow one way. Check direction in the Station Status view (hold Left CTRL) and flip with

H. Junctions exist to fan one pipe out to several modules and can be stacked to cross over.

1. Long links used to be the trap. 1.1.1.0 raised the maximum path-link distance by 50%. If you are

on an older build, keep production cells compact.

1. Nuclear Waste and Radiation. Uranium and its byproducts damage your drone unless you have Radiation

Filters installed (and they wear out); the Carbon Filters tech makes them last longer.

Controls worth learning in the first hour

When the station stalls, in this order

1. Power. Machines that slow or stop together are a power problem. Add generation or switch modules off

(hover and toggle power) before you touch anything else.

1. Input storage empty → supply. Shorten the path, add a second source, or check the recipe is

selected.

1. Output storage full → throughput. Add storage or link the output onward; a full output stops

production upstream.

1. One item missing. Use the Production Overview (level 3) to see what each location produces and uses,

then follow the missing item back down its chain: Fill → Nitrox → Oxygen → Pure Water → Water Ice, or Computers → Circuit Boards → Fibre Optics → Glass Fibre → Silica.

Sources

• Steam store page for Outworld Station (app 3242950) — release dates, developer, Early Access history:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3242950/Outworld_Station/

• Official Steam announcements feed (via the Steam news API for app 3242950), specifically: "Version 1.1 Now

Available" (24 June 2026), "Version 1.1.1.0 Now Available" (22 July 2026), "NEW BETA: Version 1.1.2.0 Now Available" (23 September 2026), "Version 1.0 Out Now!" (5 May 2026), "1.0 Release Announcement" (18 March 2026), "Version 1.0.0.5 Now Available" (4 June 2026) and "Quick Update" (4 September 2026): https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3242950 / https://api.steampowered.com/ISteamNews/GetNewsForApp/v2/?appid=3242950

• Developer release-notes thread (pinned, by "scottg", Trickjump Games):

https://steamcommunity.com/app/3242950/discussions/0/598526260522580034/

• "The Wormhole Terminus" by Xaule (Steam guide, game version 0.1.2.8) — terminus cost, 50 MW draw,

1000-unit internal tank, one-to-one linking, slot reserving: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3618389915

• "Outworld Station – Station Construction Basics & Logistics System [0.1.2]" by Eruannon (Steam guide) —

the throughput model (unlimited intake, capped send), the supply/request storage palette, one-stack buffers, round-robin priority distribution, artifact analyzer queueing, and the early mining-outpost hardware list. Read via search excerpts; the page itself was rate-limited when fetched: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3473137407

• The game's own DataTables, as extracted for the Korean localisation project outworld-station-kr

(patch built against game build 1.1.0.0, 24 June 2026): DT_Levels (station-level unlock text), DT_Tutorials, DT_ContractText and DT_LoadingScreenTips (the prologue steps, hotkeys and tips quoted above), DT_TechUpgrades, DT_Materials, DT_ProcessRecipes: https://github.com/tj-0002/outworld-station-kr (translation/source.po, translation/glossary.csv)

• Community ResourceCalculator recipe and cost data for Outworld Station (recipes, building costs, upgrade

costs, ship costs): https://resourcecalculator.com/outworld_station — its Wormhole Terminus figures match Xaule's guide exactly; I could not confirm which build its data was captured from, so individual ratios should be treated as the latest available community data rather than developer-published values.

• "Centralised Smelting & Throughput Complaints" (Steam discussion, 1.1 era) — player-measured Mk 3

Miner/Smelter and Mk 2 Wormhole throughput, and the developer's response: https://steamcommunity.com/app/3242950/discussions/0/563661399292816918/

Not stated anywhere in this guide: the numeric values of tech-upgrade tiers (the extracted strings carry <XXX> placeholders), per-module power draw and output rates (not in any source I could read), and the exact recipe changes behind 1.1's Artificial Diamond, Nitronic Acid, Oxygen and Molecular Bonding adjustments — the developer only says they were altered.